Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
I'm not actively looking to trade today, but I'll do some prep just in case.
If we see market being as volatile as it has been in the last few days though, I will use the same guidelines I set out on Wednesday.
Everything is in the red except for ADBE and NVDA
NVDA is up 17%
US banks are in the red this morning
CL is down almost 2%
GC is down .6%
USD is strong
NQ is currently ~ open for the week, which is actually quite interesting
The wicks show the market could keep exploding either way
In my opinion, LT candles are still showing that we will be continuing the bear trend
Seems that tech does not like Trump, but industrials and financials do
So are people taking their money out of tech and into DOW and ES companies?
The divergence between the ES and NQ yesterday was huge, and I've never seen it like that. It's something worth keeping an eye on
News
There are some news, but I don't even know that they are worth looking at to be honest
Low range day as people take the day off from an exhausting week
Setups I'll take today This is NOT a comprehensive list, as anything goes today, but some strong areas where I would like to enter if the right signs are there
Guarantee 10 pt profit when reasonable, at least after 4780
Aim for 4763, if the market is tanking you can target 4731, but watch the 4750 area closely and protect yourself with lowered stops
~4780
LF Short
Be careful if we are in BTFD mode, again
Guarantee 10 pt profit when reasonable
Target 4726, watch 4750 area, be ready to exit at ~4750
If market is trending down fast, you can lower target to 4685, you must watch the 4700 area closely though
~4750
LF Short
DO not take until ~4740
The market must have rejected this quite nicely as it did yesterday in the morning
~4750
LF Long
We should be in BTFD mode, do not take before the 4753 mark
This should be a break out
~4700
LF Short
You are looking for bear trend continuation
Watch how quickly this gets sliced
Prepare for a potential turnaround at ~4680, so make sure that you modify your stops to protect yourself
If the 4680 area gets broken FAST, then scale in at that area (exception from today's rules), but you need to guarantee a profit after the scale in.
~4680
LF Short
Break down time!
Watch the 4650-4660 area, and if we cross it fast then scale in and watch the news for any reason as to why the NQ should rally or start to BTFD
~4680
LF Long
Do not enter this preemptively
The turnaround must be HARD, similar to yesterday
Start to take it potentially ~4690 area, or until you feel good that there is a trend
Make sure to manage this very closely, and be ready to exit at anytime
~4660
LF Short
You should already be short from the 4680 area or even 4700 area
If we break this hard, then scale in again
Watch the 4650 area, and if we destroy that then you can scale in again
Make sure that your scale ins do not dip into your account risk, but the risk of them should only dip into unrealized profits
Hold for a while, and guarantee a profit after every 10-15 pts of bear movement, depending on how fast things go
Strategy for today, as well as rules that must be followed
You must trade with the trend, do not look for a trend reversal whatsoever, however look for areas where a trend reversal is expected and be prepared to take the trade AFTER the reversal happened (or looks like it did at least)
Start with 1 contract, only add to a position after AT LEAST 30 points, and if the market is moving your way, guarantee 10 pts of profits as soon as you are able to
Learn from your mistakes on election night, Enter at STRATEGIC locations, not just because you think the market will go a certain way
Survive the volatility until it goes the way your trade entry expected it to go, after this happens, then move your stop to a positive point. Do not exit early, do not get tempted by profits
1% max risk will be waived today, but try your best to stick to it if it's possible. This should be do-able because you never passed 0.5% risk in the last 2 days
3.5 max daily loss is still in effect, although I wouldn't want to lose more than 2.5% today
You need to keep your head in the game all day. If you sense you are starting to get frustrated, just walk away for the day
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
I gave back a decent chunk of my profits to the market today, but I learned a valuable lesson.
- SoftSoap Nov 11 2016
Some trading strategies are only good for certain market types. Last 2 days we have had huge spikes in volatility, huge volume, but very directional moves.
Today we had less volume than last few days, slower spikes, and a choppy market. If I'm going for 3-4 pt stop losses in this choppy market, it didn't matter whether I went short or long at almost any point during the morning session, I would've been stopped out.
The method I was applying last couple of days (get in with trend, survive pullback, micromanage entry and exit points, and aim for a super high target), simply doesn't work today.
Today I should've been applying my usual style of trading, where I'm looking for reversals, and I'm buying the bottoms and selling the tops, without taking any trade going with the trend.
The real thing I'll need to figure out, is how I will determine ahead of time what type of day the market will have today
In hindsight, today's a Friday, we are opening today almost at the same level we opened on Sunday, it's a bank holiday. We probably are not going to see the huge directional moves that we have seen in the past. So I need to take that kind of stuff into account for the future.
I shouldn't let today bring me down though, because I killed it this week. I'll be celebrating this weekend that's for sure.
However, I need to come back with a clear head on Monday, and find a way where I can have a rigid process that allows some flexibility should the market start acting like the last 2 days, but still consistent so I can protect my profits.
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
Election week, a historical week for the world and a historical week in SoftSoap's trading career!
Here were my goals from last week
Do not look at P&L until Friday- Failed, you can bet your ass I was checking what my P&L was after making some huge trades, I just couldn't control myself
Engage deliberate thinking in all trades- Passed if you exclude election night
Journal daily - even if you don't want to - Passed
Aim for 2 RTH trades on most days, and 3 if the market is volatile and you won at least 1 of previous trades (as for ON / Pre market trades, 3 max per week) - There might be an exception to this depending on election volatility - I want to say Failed, but honestly the volatility was huge that I feel like this is okay, but I wasn't specific enough
This report card looks bad at first glance, but as a rookie trader I just had no idea what to expect and set wrong goals for myself this week.
Looking back, I should have set goals around drawdowns, preparing myself mentally for election night, and keeping emotional trades to a minimum. Setting 2 RTH trade target on a day like Wednesday is just ridiculous, I would have missed out on such amazing trades. I should've changed that to X number of 'bad' or 'really bad' trades per day. I will refer back to this week the next time we have an event that could bring high volatility so I can set proper goals for that kind of week
The numbers
As election night was crazy for me, and not at all similar to how I trade, I've separated it into its own category.
Election Night Numbers, this is just the Overnight session as the election results were coming in
I had to manually input these into my spreadsheet, and it was a pain in the ass.
Turns out I don't know how to read my IB daily summary statement properly, as I only took 94 trades, as opposed to 190 which I thought I took.
190 was the number of overall contracts that I took, not trades
Not that 94 is a small number for a couple of hours, but yeah...
I'm going to keep tracking the rational/mixed/emotional trades for consistency sake, but I don't consider this important apart from keeping emotional trades as low as possible
Out of those trades:
Excellent trades: 7
Good trades: 15
Ok trades: 23
Bad trades: 10
Really bad trades: 1
10 emotional trades? I mean, it was a super high volatile environment, but that's still a lot more than I would like to take, 10 more to be exact :sarcastic
If I plotted this, it would look like a positively skewed bell curve, which I guess is good, but 10 bad trades and 1 really bad trade are more than I would like to take. It was high volatility environment, and I am a pretty rookie trader, but those are just bad excuses
P&L, expectancy, and payoff ratio are amazing, no complaining there, but I need to realize that with my level of experience, this can only be achieved during extremely high volatility environments like this week.
Combined P&L, expectancy, and payoff ratio numbers
P&L: 41.77%
Expectancy: 52.05
Payoff Ratio: 2.99
Overall this was a killer week for my account, 40% ROI in one week? that's insane.
It turns out to be 393 points excluding commissions, just wow.
Apart from election night, I always traded 1 contract so that's ~300 points made this week with 1 contract.
Why can't the markets be this volatile all the time?
Biggest Learning from this week Trading styles are like clothes, and the market styles are like occasions.
Provided you don't gain or lose a lot of weight, your clothes will always fit you. However, they won't always fit every occasion. A good trader will know what clothes to wear for what occasion.
My normal trading style is like jeans and a t-shirt (or boxers and a t-shirt, if we are honest here ), and that's a style where you can go to most places and fit right in. However, election night we had a white tie event, and I looked like a fool in my jeans and t-shirt, I did not fit in. Wednesday and Thursday were also white tie events, and I was prepared with my formal tux and absolutely fit right in and killed the markets.
But Friday was a t-shirt and jeans kind of day, despite being after 2 days of a white tie event. So I also looked like a fool when I came in with my tux and everyone was wearing jeans.
You can't go and make the assumption that because yesterday was an X event, you can wear the same thing you wore yesterday.
Silly simile, but it resonates well with me, I hope it did with you as well.
Mental reminder to add to my psychology prep for the next week or 2
You need to shift your focus BACK to long-term growth, and not short-term profits. The profits from last week were great, and we will definitely have some very strong days in the next couple of weeks, but that should not be the focus going forward. Remember that just because you got hot shot trader returns, doesn't make you a hotshot.
See you next week!
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
Election week is over, but how long will the effects have an impact on the markets?
The key thing I'll need to work on this week is getting back into the normal flow of things. Last week's focus was on short-term profits, but I need to get back to focusing on long-term growth
I need to see calm, collected, methodical, planned, and well executed trades.
I don't need to be in the middle of every trend, I need to stick to my plan.
Last week was an exception to the year, and unless you see a 'white tie event', make sure you are ready with your jeans on
Market Observations
Huge drop Wednesday, followed by an even bigger rally, then another bear trend down, followed by a sideway-ish rally
NQ didn't recover quite as strong as the ES or YM did
We dropped below the 4630 mark which was the bottom of the balance area for months, although we recovered very quickly
Volume was highest since February, we passed 2MM contracts traded for the week
ATR is @ ~130, highest we've seen since post-brexit, this will likely grow though
My prep signs show me we had a very strong bull week, but I can't let that cloud my judgment as we did have an election
Long term wicks show we could honestly trend hard either way, so do not go into this week with an overall bias
We'll probably start to hear talk about the December fed meeting, so changes in the interest rate expectations could move markets
Trump was very critical of Yellen, so we will see if there are talks about canning her, that could move markets
CL down to ~43
GC down to 1230
News
Monday - Nada
Tuesday - Retail sales, Import and export, manufacturing survey, business inventories
Wednesday, Industrial production, housing market index, CSCO earnings post close
Thursday, ECB minutes, CPI, Housting Starts, Jobless Claims, Philadelphia fed business outlook survey, AMAT earnings post close
Friday- Nada
Daily psychology goals assuming relatively normal market conditions
3 trades per day maximum, only take a 4th if you would still be up at least 0.75% if you lost
Engage deliberate thinking in all trades, no exceptions
Do not get greedy with your trades, if the day looks to be sub 60 range do not aim for more than 22 pts target
Go back to your trade management standard, don't micromanage your trades unless conditions are extremely volatile
I need to be prepared in case we do have some days where we have crazy volatility, so here are my psychology goals in case that happens.
Daily psychology goals if we have crazy volatility with very strong moves
2.5% loss maximum, and take a break after 1.5% of losses
You must trade with the trend, do not look for a trend reversal whatsoever
Start with 1 contract, only add to a position after AT LEAST 30 points
Enter at STRATEGIC locations, not just because you think the market will go a certain way
Survive the volatility until it goes the way your trade entry expected it to go, after this happens, then move your stop to a positive point. Do not exit early, do not get tempted by profits
Engage deliberate thinking in all trades, no exceptions even if it means a worse fill
1% max risk per trade stands
You need to keep your head in the game all day. If you sense you are starting to get frustrated, just walk away for the day
This week will be a test on my 'adaptability'. I need to expect things to be normal-ish (meaning no 1% moves in the NQ in seconds), but I need to be prepared should they change, and change back once the extraordinary conditions are done.
Let's do this!
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
This morning I had some problems getting out of bed
I went to sleep early but I got woken up a couple of times at night and probably didn't get sufficient REM sleep. I shut my alarm off and told myself I wouldn't trade when I got a bad sleep, in the past trading while tired and cranky has led to bad results.
By the time I got up it was like 20 minutes before open, I did some prep but didn't quite get a chance to finish it and post it.
It wasn't like I had no plan, because I spent a lot of time last night looking at areas and thinking about what sort of trades I would be looking for, so I had a good idea as to what to do. I just didn't have the time to formalize it to FIO before the opening bell. And once the market started going crazy and I took a bunch of trades, I just felt like it was a waste of time to go and do it
One thing that I need to work out soon is the efficiency in my journaling process. At first I only cared about being effective, but with the way the markets have been moving lately, I don't have the time to do all the notes on my trade screenshots, track them in my spreadsheet, analyze the market, journal them, etc. as I'm sometimes in trades for seconds with this high volatility
I'm not saying it will mean I won't journal, I just need to refine my process to make it more efficient.
If anybody has any ideas on what I could do to make this process more efficient, without impacting effectiveness, please let me know!
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
Unfortunately today I did not stick to that. I thought the market was moving strong enough that it would warrant that I move over to a max loss % as a measure to take me out, instead of the # of trades. I did leave myself room for this to happen as part of my weekend plan.
It ended up being very close to Friday in terms of 'market style', which honestly it's not something I've yet learn how to adapt to.
Right now the conundrum I'm faced with is as follows:
Do I limit flexibility in my trading style (max X trades per day) and slowly learn until the market conditions become more favorable for my trading style?
or do I allow flexibility and protect my account with a max % loss so that I can learn how to trade in this environment as fast as possible?
I honestly don't know what my focus should be right now
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
My 2 cents worth. For me a max % loss of the account makes the most sense at this point of my trading journey as it protects my account from one time big losses and I still learn in the process. I can always switch to sim the moment I have lost this % and continue learning in the live market. Exactly what this percentage is I think is a very personal trading style type thing.
The other thing that I do not see in your journal is a reward to risk type strategy. I might be totally wrong and just missing it. I always try and make at least a 2:1 reward to risk ratio with every trade (don't always get that right, but I try my best). This means that my winners are always 2 times bigger than my losers if I trade my strategy well. The way my targets are setup, it also means that I am in a risk free trade the moment my 2:1 target is filled. Granted that this will not work for scalping for example, but looking at your trading style and what you are trying to achieve, I do not think that scalping is what you are doing.
I appreciate your 2 cents!
This is honestly what I'm leaning towards right now.
Since my goal is long-term growth, I think that learning this even if I lose some money but still keep within a manageable amount, it will be the best for my career long-term.
However, the one thing that concerns me is the potential impact this would have on my psychology and mid-term performance. Will this create bad habits that will be much harder to deal with in the future? I'm not sure to be honest.
I might not talk about this in my journal but I do have a reward to risk type strategy. My default trade is 3:1 in terms of reward:risk (18 ticks stop, 55 pts target). If I don't think there's an opportunity to make AT LEAST 2.5x what I am risking, I don't even think about getting into the trade.
Things change within the trade though, and sometimes I'll take a profit less than 3:1 if conditions are changing. Or like I did a lot today, move my stop below or close to my entry point, to ensure I don't take the full loss if the market goes completely against me.
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
